More on Reuters and IM from the good people at eWeek.
IM Interoperability Becoming a Reality
Reuters, MSN to Announce Connectivity Deal
My most recent postings on IM:
Yahoo IM interoperability? - September 16, 2003
Reuters + AOL = IM - September 9, 2003
My latest column for CIO Sweden. In this month's story "Escape from Sand Hill Road" I look at the VC population of the famous road. I also comment on the address' allure to "tech tourists".
Some more info on the service that I applauded in April.
"The first wave of Kinko's installations will be in North Texas, Northern and Central California, New Jersey and New York. Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., will be among the regions that the companies will focus on by the beginning of next year."
From last week's Yahoo user survey:
"Yahoo Messenger is considering introducing a new service that would allow you to use Yahoo Messenger to communicate with users of other instant messaging services such as AOL, MSN, or ICQ." "This premium Messenger service as described above would be offered along with the current free Messenger features for a small and appropriate fee."
Will it happen? Probably. When? My guess is early 2004. Is it a good thing? Yes oh yes! When IM is truly interoperable we will finally be able to take a proper look at the true potential of the technology and its business uses.
This is good news! AOL and Reuters are getting cosy with their IM’s. Users of Reuters' own messaging client will now be able to communicate with people across AOL's IM board: AOL, AIM and ICQ. In late March I wrote about how Reuters hired David Gurle from Microsoft. This is one of the first external signs of it beginning to pay off.
A study from research firm Gartner finds that Britain is leading Europe in wireless net access. According to the study Britain will have about 27% of Europe's hotspots by the end of the year, followed by Germany with 23%.
This ties in nicely to a story on ZDNet UK about the lack of customer support at many hotspots. Or make that awareness! I've had some funny/sad experiences around both Europe and the U.S. where staff at locations offering Wi-Fi access have been completely clueless to what Wi-Fi is and that they actually offer it! At the oposit end of the scale is the staff at a coffe shop/roastery in San Francisco that I frequent from time to time. Not only do they know what Wi-Fi is, the staff think the technology is the coolest thing ever and gladly help novices configure settings etc. And the coffee is good too.
"The new [Office 2003] rights management tools splinter to some extent the long-standing interoperability of Office formats. Until now, PC users have been able to count on opening and manipulating any document saved in Microsoft Word's ".doc" format or Excel's ".xls" in any compatible program, including older versions of Office and competing packages [...]. But rights-protected documents created in Office 2003 can be manipulated only in Office 2003."
On the heels of locking down MSN Messenger, Office 2003 becomes a little less usefull. Just as with the .zip debacle this can only lead to frustration. Yes, it will probably force more people to upgrade to Office 2003. But is this really how MS wants to increase its Office revenue and expand the softwares reach? Finding new users for the productivity suite is a huge priority for Microsoft and a fascinating challenge that I look forward to following. Especially as the push is headed by Jeff Raikes, the person who created Word, Excel etc back in the day. I just hope there are more inventive strategies in the pipeline. This is just to much of a barrier that won't do the company any good in the long run. And it will most likely harm its customers in the short term.
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